My Path Not Taken

It's amazing how much stuff goes on in the world of which we're completely unaware. Apparently I completely missed Miss Teen USA, several fashion shows, and Hempfest 2008 (all in the past week or so). Don't know how that last one slipped by my radar.

I feel like there's enough stuff out there for several completely separate planets full of people, and if you divided it up just right, not many people would miss any of the stuff on any of the other planets. Globalization may work economically, and I may put Hempfest 2009 on my Google Calendar, but at a certain level we're all very local, self-isolating creatures who can't handle a world that's too big.

This is all my way of wondering how people can live within 5 minutes (walking) from 100 restaurants, only try 25 of them, and then return to the 10 they like. In my mind, if I did that, it means there's 30 more restaurants out there I'd like and I need to go find them. But I realize I have the same human tendency, it just manifests itself in different ways. I think we've all got it somehow.

Some of us do it with academic/intellectual pursuits. Some of us settle in our jobs. Some of us (like me) don't feel the need to live in 10 different cities and countries before they know where they like being. We don't have unlimited resources, so it makes sense we settle on the things that aren't as important (for example, I don't have time to figure out how to optimize a credit card reward system--I know I can do better, but I don't care). But how restrictive is too restrictive? How can we tell when we're making a good choice, so we can focus on important things? How can we tell when we're living life sub-optimally? And is it worth the time it would take to become better at telling the difference?